Along the way, the group passed through over a dozen cities.
Qin Xiao did not conceal his identity and traveled unimpeded.
Everyone knew that their Emperor of Great Qin cared deeply for the southern frontier and had come in person.
The commoners knelt to welcome him, and the soldiers' eyes filled with tears!
Qin Xiao did not linger, advancing at maximum speed to arrive at Qingshan City.
.....
Meanwhile, a flurry of carrier pigeons bearing messages arrived at Yumen Pass.
Inside the City Lord's estate.
Xiao Xuance was admiring a painting.
The woman depicted on it was as beautiful as a celestial maiden.
Her beaming smile was enough to leave anyone intoxicated and obsessed.
It was none other than the female general of the Great Zhou, the woman he loved.
He could not help but reach out, gently stroking the portrait with a look of pure infatuation.
"If I could only have you... I would have no regrets in this life..."
Xiao Xuance's expression was full of tenderness.
Just then, a guard reported from outside the door.
"General, His Majesty is leading men to the southern frontier!"
"What?"
Xiao Xuance's smile vanished, and his brows furrowed.
How much time had actually passed? How could Qin Xiao arrive so quickly?
Without wasting time to overthink it, he turned and stepped out of the room.
"Where is Qin Xiao now?"
"To answer the General, according to the news from our scouts, His Majesty has taken the traitor Ma Shan and is heading toward Qingshan City."
The guard replied.
Xiao Xuance abruptly froze, his eyes locking onto the guard with the ferocity of a wolf or tiger.
"What did you say? Qin Xiao met up with Ma Shan?"
The worst-case scenario had occurred!
A wave of irritation surged in his heart.
Originally, he had planned to wait for Qin Xiao to arrive at Yumen Pass so he could manipulate him.
He never expected Qin Xiao to run into Ma Shan; the Emperor would definitely be on his guard now!
"Damn it! That traitor! If I had known, I would have killed him regardless of the cost!"
Xiao Xuance cursed in a low, angry voice.
The guard trembled in fear and spoke up weakly.
"General, I heard that His Majesty headed to Qingshan City without bringing a single soldier. Could it be to defend Qingshan City?"
Hearing this, Xiao Xuance looked stunned for a moment before a look of immense joy washed over his face.
"Qin Xiao didn't bring a single soldier?"
"Hahaha! Heaven is helping me!"
He threw his head back and laughed uproariously.
"To dare go to Qingshan City alone without a single soldier? Qin Xiao, oh Qin Xiao, you really think too highly of yourself."
Xiao Xuance had already gifted Qingshan City to the Great Zhou.
Right now, the Great Zhou was probably attacking Qingshan City.
Even if Qin Xiao rushed over, what could he do?
He could only watch helplessly as Qingshan City was destroyed.
"Pass down my orders: assemble the army! Follow this general to Qingshan City!"
Xiao Xuance's expression was utterly thrilled.
He couldn't let Qin Xiao die at the hands of the Great Zhou army. If he could capture and control Qin Xiao, it would be equivalent to holding the Emperor hostage to command the nobles!
This time, he was going to have a good look at this so-called Qin Xiao!
And conveniently, he would be able to meet his Rou'er on the battlefield again.
"Yes, General!"
The guard took the order and retreated.
Soon, an army of two hundred thousand men was fully assembled.
Their banners blotted out the sun, and their swords and spears formed a forest.
Xiao Xuance raised his arm and shouted, and the massive army marched out of the city, heading straight for Qingshan City!
....
At this very moment.
Qingshan City.
Outside the city walls, the two hundred thousand strong Great Zhou army surrounded Qingshan City like a tidal wave, leaving no gaps for escape.
Their iron armor and spears reflected a piercing, cold light!
Looking from afar, it resembled a suffocatingly dark cloud, a shocking sight to behold!
The leading female general, clad in fiery red armor, rode forward with a heroic and dashing bearing.
"Your Great General Xiao Xuance has ordered you to open the city gates!"
With an arrogant posture, she shouted crisply, her voice echoing across the top of the city walls.
"If you want to attack, then attack! We don't believe that Great General Xiao would surrender Qingshan City to the enemy!"
The defending Great Qin soldiers gritted their teeth tightly.
Their faces were filled with grief and indignation.
Feeling the overwhelming murderous aura radiating from outside the walls, they feared that Qingshan City would be breached before long!
But even so, as soldiers of Great Qin, they would fight the Great Zhou army to the bitter end!
Wang Xuerou let out a scoff.
She waved her hand.
Beside her, two of Xiao Xuance's trusted confidants rode forward.
"Insolent! Are you blind? Look at who we are!"
"The two of us are Great General Xiao's deputy generals!"
"General Xiao has ordered you to open the gates and surrender. Are you going to defy General Xiao's orders?!"
The two men brought out Xiao Xuance's tiger tally.
"The tiger tally is here! How dare you be so insolent!"
In an instant, the defenders of Qingshan City widened their eyes, staring fixedly at the tiger tally.
Their eyes turned red, their heads spun dizzily, and their bodies trembled.
It was actually General Xiao's tiger tally!
General Xiao actually wanted them to surrender to the enemy!
What deep irony this was!
They wanted to fight to the death, yet their Great General ordered them to surrender!
True despair was not about how many enemies there were, but about their own general telling them to surrender!
For a moment, a deathly silence fell over the city walls.
"We will say it one more time: open the gates and surrender. Otherwise, when the city is breached, all of you will be slaughtered!"
The two deputy generals roared again, their voices like thunder.
The faces of the soldiers on the wall twisted in pain and despair.
"Why... why would General Xiao issue such an absurd order!"
"Does he not know... that the Great Zhou army will slaughter the city for three days once they enter?"
"There are hundreds of thousands of commoners in our Qingshan City!"
The soldiers questioned with hoarse, exhausted voices.
The two deputy generals maintained cold, indifferent expressions.
"You don't need to know that. General Xiao has his own arrangements!"
"Hurry up and open the gates! Otherwise, you will be killed without mercy!"
The soldiers' expressions showed struggle, hatred, agony, and humiliation!
They fell into a deep despair.
Before the battle even began, they were ordered to surrender.
But the price of surrender was the lives of all the citizens in the city!
What did they become soldiers for?
To protect their homes and defend their country!
However, right at this moment.
An aged yet powerful voice exploded into the heavens!
"I, Huang Hansheng, eat the salary of my lord and obey the orders of His Majesty! What kind of thing is that wet-behind-the-ears brat Xiao Xuance, to think he is worthy of making this old man surrender!"
As the loud roar faded.
Swish! Swish!
The sound of something tearing through the air suddenly rang out.
Two flashes of cold light shot out from the city wall at a speed that left no time to react!
They pierced through the throats of the two deputy generals with absolute precision!
Blood splattered into the air!
The two men clutched their throats, their eyes wide open, as their bodies went limp and tumbled off their horses.
Silence reigned atop Qingshan City. Countless people looked up in a deathly stillness, turning their gazes toward the place where the two cloud-piercing arrows had been fired.
There stood an old general with a weathered face, wearing beast-patterned armor and holding a Qilin bow in his hand.
His hair and beard were gray, his eyes were wide with anger, and his imposing aura was astonishing.
"The soldiers of Great Qin can be killed, but they cannot be humiliated!"
"An old steed in the stable still yearns to gallop a thousand miles!"
"Today, this old man will rely on his twilight years and frail body to slaughter your two hundred thousand Great Zhou iron troops!"
His appearance caused the bodies of the Great Qin soldiers to tremble!
Their suppressed anger erupted!
Their once desperate eyes reignited with a resolute light!
Their blood boiled with passion as they looked at the old general.
"We are willing to follow Old General Huang and fight to the death!"
A unified roar echoed throughout the heavens and the earth!
ap a wealthy young lady? Or else I'll be eliminated by the system? Ye Feng, who awakened the Kidnapper System, originally wanted to live a peaceful life but never imagined he would become a kidnapper of young women. However, after some time, he discovered that all the girls the system ordered him to kidnap were far from ordinary. "Big brother Ye Feng~ You've kidnapped my heart, and now you're not allowed to leave me ever again~" "Ye Feng~ You kidnapped me back then, now it's my turn to capture you♡" "Little Feng, you're mine! You can only be mine!" "Ye Feng, none of them deserve you. Only I love you the most♡" ... This is madness, they've all gone mad! Wait, what? Why are all the girls I kidnapped yanderes?!
s the Eldest Princess, renowned for her cold and aloof detachment, became the most docile of lambs, obeying his every command without question. But when the final move was played on the chessboard, as Gu Chenghan seized everything and ascended on the verge of apotheosis, that very Princess suddenly embraced him from behind, her tone carrying a dependence never heard before: "Wait... you haven't yet... commanded me to love you forever." Gu Chenghan froze abruptly. She... hadn't been hypnotized?! ... [The Eldest Princess's Diary] [When my soul was extracted, becoming the sole spectator outside my own shell] [At first, there was overwhelming fury, until I saw] [How he used my sword to effortlessly shatter my inescapable doom] [How he wielded my authority to eradicate fatal conspiracies I had never even detected] [Like a deity, he rescued me from the deep mire I was trapped in] [If not for those annoying vixens, he and I would be a match made in heaven] [I think I am ill, gravely ill] [My deity should belong to me alone] ... "Hypnosis? Oh, it succeeded, my dear Master." "Only this time, it's my turn to hypnotize you."
ive and Ruthless] Before his transmigration, Ye Xuan was playing a game called "Severing Emotions to Attain the Dao." The game's core wasn't about leveling up by fighting monsters, but about conquering various "bad women" with wicked personalities and cold, fickle natures. There was only one method to conquer them: stay unwaveringly by their side, then die at a critical moment, driving them to madness after losing the protagonist. The higher their level of regret, the higher the player's score. To dominate the server, Ye Xuan conquered all the bad women. In the early stages, he showered them with boundless tenderness, only to choose to sacrifice himself for them later, making them weep bitterly and drown in regret. Among them were: Xia Lengyue, the unfaithful immortal wife who chased after powerful men and discarded her husband like trash. Ye Qingcheng, the Demonic Venerable of the Joyous Union Sect, who appeared pure and innocent but was, in reality, promiscuous. Wu Lingxiao, the Empress of the Great Xia Dynasty, who lusted after men and loved maintaining a harem. Bai Qiangu of the Endless Demonic Sect: a bloodthirsty mass murderer. However, when the protagonist transmigrated into the game world, he made a horrifying discovery. Eight hundred years had already passed. The bad women he had conquered had now each become deities and revered ancestors. Faced with the endless stream of toxic women coming for him, Ye Xuan could only rely on his god-tier acting skills to carve a path of survival through this world of treacherous women.
nd fell into a coma while saving his younger sister from an out-of-control car. He became a vegetable. No one knew that his consciousness had crossed into a world of cultivation. Over the course of sixty years, he began as the lowest kind of mine slave, struggling to survive amid mountains of corpses and seas of blood. By sheer chance, he eventually obtained the complete memories of a fallen Immortal King. Alchemy, medicine, formations, feng shui, physiognomy, artifact forging… Every great inheritance of the cultivation world was now his. But when he opened his eyes again, he discovered that ten full years had passed in the modern world. To pay for his treatment, his father had sold the family’s shop and house, leaving himself covered in lasting injuries and illness. His mother had cared for him day and night, and more than half of her hair had already turned white. His younger sister, who had been only fifteen back then, was now twenty-five. To help repay the family’s debts, she had been forced to lower her head and put on a smiling face in places of glittering lights and endless revelry. Only then did Chen Xuan understand that what he had lost was not merely ten years. He had lost the life his entire family was meant to have. The good news was that he had brought back the memories of an Immortal King’s entire lifetime. The bad news was that his soul had returned alone—his cultivation had not come with him. Spiritual energy was scarce, resources were depleted, and the modern world still had firearms, surveillance, capital, and laws. If he wanted to protect his family, break free from everyone’s control, and become truly invincible beneath the heavens, he would have to start all over again.
